Top 100 Brennan Manning Quotes
#1. The religion of cheerfulness, as Father Brown reminds us, is a cruel religion, and maybe the best way not to go mad is not to mind too much if you do go mad.2
Brennan Manning
#2. Creation discloses a power that baffles our minds and beggars our speech. We are enamored and enchanted by God's power. We stutter and stammer about God's holiness. We tremble before God's majesty ...
and yet, we grow squeamish and skittish before God's love.
Brennan Manning
#3. One of my realizations in such an earthy atmosphere was that many of the burning theological issues in the church were neither burning nor theological.
Brennan Manning
#4. Christianity is not an ethical code. It is a love affair, a Spirit-filled way of living aimed at making us professional lovers of God and people.
Brennan Manning
#5. What makes a genius? The ability to see. To see what? The butterfly in a caterpillar, the eagle in an egg, the saint in a selfish person, life in death, unity in separation,
God in the human and human in God and suffering as the form in which the incomprehensibility of God himself appears.
Brennan Manning
#6. Jesus comes not for the super-spiritual but for the wobbly and the weak-kneed who know they don't have it all together, and who are not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace.
Brennan Manning
#7. We can only sense ourselves and our world valued and cherished by God when we feel valued and cherished by others '.
Brennan Manning
#8. There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are.
Brennan Manning
#9. The gospel will persuade no one unless it has so convicted us that we are transformed by it.
Brennan Manning
#10. In philosophy, the opposite of truth is error; in Scripture, the opposite of truth is a lie.
Brennan Manning
#11. The litmus test of our love for God is our love of neighbor.
Brennan Manning
#12. Choose a single, sacred word or phrase that captures something of the flavor of your intimate relationship with God. A word such as Jesus, Abba, Peace, God or a phrase such as "Abba, I belong to you." ... Without moving your lips, repeat the sacred word inwardly, slowly, and often.
Brennan Manning
#13. Secondly, if we continue to view ourselves as moral lepers and spiritual failures, if our lives are shadowed by low self-esteem, shame, remorse, unhealthy guilt, and self-hatred, we reject the teaching of Jesus and cling to our negative self-image. In
Brennan Manning
#14. Only reckless confidence in a Source greater than ourselves can empower us to forgive the woulds inflicted by others.
Brennan Manning
#15. The story goes that a public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church. He took his woes to God. 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.'
'What are you complaining about?' said God. 'They won't let Me in either.
Brennan Manning
#16. It was C. S. Lewis who said, "We need to be reminded more than instructed.
Brennan Manning
#17. Do you honestly believe God likes you, not just loves you because theologically God has to love you?
Brennan Manning
#18. Accepting the reality of our sinfulness means accepting our authentic self. Judas could not face his shadow; Peter could. The latter befriended the impostor within; the former raged against him.
Brennan Manning
#19. Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.
Brennan Manning
#20. On one level, a roomful of men is always a dangerous thing. Competition is usually in the air, so the potential for violence is always nearby.
Brennan Manning
#21. To be alive is to
be broken; to be broken is to stand in need of grace.
Brennan Manning
#22. The beauty of the ragamuffin gospel lies in the insight it offers into Jesus: the essential tenderness of His heart, His way of looking at the world, His mode of relating to you and me. 'If you really want to understand a man, don't just listen to what he says, but watch what he does.
Brennan Manning
#23. The way you are with others every day, regardless of their status, is the true test of faith.
Brennan Manning
#24. God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.
Brennan Manning
#25. We are enveloped in peace, whether or not we feel ourselves to be at peace. By that I mean the peace that passes understanding is not a subjective sensation of peace; if we are in Christ, we are in peace even when we feel no peace.
Brennan Manning
#26. Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith.
Brennan Manning
#27. Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try and find something or someone that it cannot cover. Grace is enough.
Brennan Manning
#28. Christianity doesn't deny the reality of suffering and evil ... Our hope ... is not based on the idea that we are going to be free of pain and suffering. Rather, it is based on the conviction that we will triumph over suffering.
Brennan Manning
#29. A saint is not someone who is good but who experiences the goodness of God.
Brennan Manning
#30. Being the beloved is our identity, the core of our existence. It is not merely a lofty thought, an inspiring idea, or one name among many. It is the name by which God knows us and the way He relates to us
Brennan Manning
#31. Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat out denial of the gospel of grace.
Brennan Manning
#32. You will trust God to the degree you know you are loved by Him.
Brennan Manning
#33. In a revealed religion, silence with God has a value in itself and for its own sake, just because God is God. Failure to recognize the value of mere being with God, as the beloved, without doing anything, is to gouge the heart out of Christianity."10 Silent solitude makes true speech possible
Brennan Manning
#34. The ancient spiritual tradition is that God gives himself fully to us in silence and solitude.
Brennan Manning
#36. Jesus comes for sinners, for those outcast ... and those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams.
Brennan Manning
#38. Whatever we have done in the past, be it good or evil, great or small, is irrelevant to our stance before God today. It is only NOW that we are in the presence of God.
Brennan Manning
#39. Silent solitude makes true speech possible and personal. If I am not in touch with my own belovedness, then I cannot touch the sacredness of others. If I am estranged from myself, I am likewise a stranger to others.
Brennan Manning
#41. I could more easily contain Niagara Falls in a tea cup than I can comprehend the wild, uncontainable love of God.
Brennan Manning
#42. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.
Brennan Manning
#43. Faith means wanting God and wanting to want nothing else.
Brennan Manning
#44. The only cure for suffering is to face it head on, grasp it round the neck and use it.
Brennan Manning
#45. There is an extraordinary power in storytelling that stirs the imagination and makes an indelible impression on the mind.
Brennan Manning
#46. Men and women whose outlook on life is conditioned by the Dow are shrewder on the street than are the disciples on their spiritual journey.
Brennan Manning
#48. Elsewhere I've written that Jesus came not only for those who skip morning meditations, but also for real sinners, thieves, adulterers, and terrorists, for those caught up in squalid choices and failed dreams. I HAVE COME TO CALL NOT THE SELF-RIGHTEOUS, BUT SINNERS. (MATT. 9:13)
Brennan Manning
#49. Wrong thinking about God and people often begins with a debased image of ourselves.
Brennan Manning
#50. But if I've learned anything about the world of grace, it's that failure is always a chance for a do-over.
Brennan Manning
#51. The Good News of the gospel of grace cries out: We are all, equally, privileged but unentitled beggars at the door of God's mercy!
Brennan Manning
#53. We cannot accept love from another human being when we do not love ourselves, much less accept that God could possibly love us.
Brennan Manning
#54. In human beings, love is a quality, a high-prized virtue; in God, love is His identity.
Brennan Manning
#55. The way we are with each other is the truest test of our faith.
Brennan Manning
#57. Moralism and its stepchild, legalism, reduce the love story of God for his people to the observance of burdensome duties and oppressive laws.
Brennan Manning
#58. Assured of your salvation by the unique grace of our Lord Jesus Christ is the heartbeat of the gospel, joyful liberation from fear of the Final Outcome, a summons to self-acceptance, and freedom for a life of compassion toward others.
Brennan Manning
#59. Catherine de Hueck Doherty observes in The Gospel Without Compromise: The Gospel can be summed up by saying that it is the tremendous, tender, compassionate, gentle, extraordinary, explosive, revolutionary revelation of Christ's love.
Brennan Manning
#60. Lord, when I feel that what I'm doing is insignificant and unimportant, help me to remember that everything I do is significant and important in your eyes, because you love me and you put me here, and no one else can do what I am doing in exactly the way I do it.
Brennan Manning
#61. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross is His greatest single act of unwavering trust in His Abba's love. He plunged into the darkness of death, not fully knowing what awaited Him, confident that somehow, some way, His Abba would vindicate Him.
Brennan Manning
#62. * Recognize that God is with you.
* Acknowledge God knows what He's doing.
* Search for God's will: the path He desires you to take in life.
* Consider what God did for you when He sent Jesus to die on the cross (forgiveness and righteousness)
Brennan Manning
#64. We must go out into a desert of some kind (your backyard will do) and come into a personal experience of the awesome love of God.
Brennan Manning
#65. When "doing" becomes divorced from "being", pious thoughts become a poor substitute for washing dirty feet.
Brennan Manning
#66. The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change. It is reliable. And always tender.
Brennan Manning
#67. The awesome love of our invisible God has become both visible and audible in Jesus Christ, the glory of the only Son filled with enduring love.
Brennan Manning
#68. Faithfulness requires the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the willingness to keep growing, and the readiness to risk failure throughout our lives.
Brennan Manning
#69. My deepest awareness of myself is that I am deeply loved by Jesus Christ and I have done nothing to earn it or deserve it.
Brennan Manning
#70. It is for the inconsistent, unsteady disciples whose cheese is falling off their cracker.
Brennan Manning
#71. God is a kooky God who can scarcely bear to be without us.
Brennan Manning
#72. Hope your wildest hopes, dream your maddest dreams, imagine your most fantastic fantasies. Where your hopes and your dreams and your imagination leave off, the love of my Heavenly Father only begins.
Brennan Manning
#73. The most urgent need in your life is to trust what you have received.
Brennan Manning
#75. He is the only God man has ever heard of who loves sinners. False gods - the gods of human manufacturing - despise sinners, but the Father of Jesus loves all, no matter what they do.
Brennan Manning
#76. We are not cowed into timidity by death and life. Were we forced to rely on our own shabby resources we would be pitiful people in deed. But the awareness of Christ's present risenness persuades us that we are buoyed up and carried on by a life greater than our own.
Brennan Manning
#77. Anyone we come in contact with, we either offer them life, or we drain them.
Brennan Manning
#78. At Sunday worship, as in every dimension of our existence, many of us pretend to believe we are sinners. Consequently, all we can do is pretend we have been forgiven. As a result, our whole spiritual life is pseudo-repentance and pseudo-bliss.
Brennan Manning
#79. The deepest desire of our hearts is for union for God. God created us for union with himself. This is the original purpose of our lives.
Brennan Manning
#80. Richard Rohr said, If we don't learn to transform the pain, we'll transfer it.
Brennan Manning
#81. The kingdom belongs to people who aren't trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior.
Brennan Manning
#82. There is an essential connection between experiencing God, loving God, and trusting God. You will trust God only as much as you love him. And you will love him to the extent you have touched him, rather that he has touched you.
Brennan Manning
#83. Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. - Ephesians 4:31-32
Brennan Manning
#84. We should be astonished at the goodness of God, stunned that He should bother to call us by name, our mouths wide open at His love, bewildered that at this very moment we are standing on holy ground.
Brennan Manning
#85. On the last day, Jesus will look us over not for medals, diplomas, or honors, but for scars.
Brennan Manning
#86. When being is divorced from doing, pious thoughts become an adequate substitute for washing dirty feet.
Brennan Manning
#87. The more guilt and shame that we have buried within ourselves, the more compelled we feel to seek relief through sin.
Brennan Manning
#88. Sin and forgiveness and falling and getting back up and losing the pearl of great price in the couch cushions but then finding it again, and again, and again? Those are the stumbling steps to becoming Real, the only script that's really worth following in this world or the one that's coming.
Brennan Manning
#89. Jesus was victorious not because he never flinched, talked back, or questioned, but having flinched, talked back, and questioned, he remained faithful.
Brennan Manning
#90. No man can adequately reach and explain a single word of God with all his words
Brennan Manning
#91. Ragamuffins are simple, direct and honest. Their speech is unaffected. They are slow to claim, "God told me ... " As they make their way through the world, they bear wordless, prophetic witness.
Brennan Manning
#92. In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.
Brennan Manning
#93. Jesus reveals a God who does not demand but who gives; who does not oppress but who raises up; who does not wound but who heals; who does not condemn but forgives.
Brennan Manning
#94. The ragamuffin gospel says we can't lose, because we have nothing to lose.
Brennan Manning
#95. While the impostor draws his identity from past achievements and the adulation of others, the true self claims identity in its belovedness. We encounter God in the ordinariness of life: not in the search for spiritual highs and extraordinary, mystical experiences but in our simple presence in life.
Brennan Manning
#96. God is loving us - you and me - this moment, just as we are and not as we should be.
Brennan Manning
#98. The Christian with depth is the person who has failed and who has learned to live with it.
Brennan Manning
#99. The god who exacts the last drop of blood from his Son so that his just anger, evoked by sin, may be appeased, is not the God revealed by and in Jesus Christ. And if he is not the God of Jesus, he does not exist.
Brennan Manning
#100. Love proves its authenticity in fidelity, but reaches its completion in forgiveness.
Brennan Manning
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